On a serene Australian beach, beneath the glow of Hanukkah lights and the warmth of shared tradition, Jewish families recently gathered in peaceful celebration—one of the most human acts imaginable: to remember, to rejoice, to belong. But into that moment of quiet dignity stepped the forces of hatred, cloaked in the false mantle of divine justice. The recent attack by Islamist extremists—who targeted these innocent people with lethal violence—stands not as a testament to faith, but as a grotesque display of moral imbecility: the inability to distinguish good from evil and humanity from warped dogma.
The term moral imbecile is not used here lightly. It refers not to intellectual deficiency, but to a profound rot at the core of ethical reasoning—a mind so warped by ideology that it can no longer perceive the sanctity of life, especially life that differs in belief or practice. These individuals do not speak for God; they scream their own rage into the void and call it prophecy. They commit atrocities not because they understand divinity, but because they have lost all connection to morality.
The flaw in their thinking is systemic and insidious. First is the delusion of divine authorisation: the belief that violence can be sanctified by faith. This is not religion—it is religion hijacked. Authentic spiritual traditions across the world, including Islam, emphasise mercy, compassion, and the inviolability of life. The Qur’an itself states, “Whoever kills a soul… it is as if he has slain all of humanity” (5:32). Yet extremists invert this truth, twisting scripture to justify bloodshed, reciting verses out of context while ignoring the wisdom of centuries of scholars who opposed such barbarism.
Second is the illusion of moral superiority. The extremist sees himself not as a murderer, but as a ‘purifier’, a ‘warrior of faith’ cleansing the world of impurity. This fantasy of moral elevation blinds him to the most fundamental truth: that no cause—however grand it appears in the mind of a zealot—can justify the premeditated killing of children, elders, or families gathered in peace. The murderer becomes a martyr in his own myth, while the victims—laughing, lighting candles, singing songs—are rendered invisible, irrelevant. This erasure of empathy is the hallmark of moral collapse.
Third is the projection of inner emptiness. Behind every act of religious terrorism lies not conviction, but crisis—a vacuum of identity, purpose, or self-worth that the ideology fills with false certainty. The extremist doesn’t act for God; he acts because he feels enraged. He elevates his bitterness to cosmic significance, believing that by killing others in “God’s name,” he gains control, meaning, and immortality. But this is not faith. It is fanaticism born of delusion.
Such acts of terror are not religious; they are psychological. They are not divine commands; they are control dramas played out on the global stage. The killer does not hear God’s voice—he hears the echo of his own rage, rehearsed into a sermon. He does not carry out holy war—he panders to his own inadequacies, using the bodies of innocents as props in a performance of power.
In the end, we must be clear: these murderers do not act in God’s name. They act in the name of their own fractured psyches and their manufactured myths. To call their actions religious is to give legitimacy to lies.
Let us remember this fact: God needs no defence. Those who claim to kill for the Divine are not warriors of light—they are shadows of human failure, mistaking their darkness for revelation.
Worldwide Temple of Aurora 